New Zealand is holding its first Kiwicon in Wellington Nov 17 -18, 2007.
		I did promise to take my mom to the beach boys concert on the 18th ... hey don't laugh, i used to be a surfer
		chick and i like old music and my brother did get us front row tickets. i am wondering how many speeding tickets 
		i will get driving from Wellington to Auckland.... i could ask the prime minster.  Naughty Helen
		so sorry Shammah and pipes for putting kiwicon and beach boys in the same paragraph, you can beat me later.

 
		For the past 15 months i have been raising my little girl, have completed ten papers towards a degree
		and have helped care for and eventually bury my father. i am exausted.

		I have been thinking about parents alot as you do when one dies. At first you think of all the bad things
		the things you hated most, like the way my dad always told me to shutup, i talk a load of crap and no
		one really cares about what i have to say. or he tells me i am stupid. you hear it enough times, you believe 
		it. other people hear it enough times they believe it of you too. "concentrate on being a good wife".
		I hated the way he would ignore me or brush me off, in favour of the boys (my brothers).

		Then i saw my father so sick as the tummor in his brain took him from me, leaving a corpse of a person
		i did not recognise. still alive in body, gone in every other way.
		i remembered all the good stuff. my father taught me to bait a hook, catch a fish, sail a yacht, drive
		a car, opperate a motor boat, snorkle the reefs, body surf, boogie board down a grass slope, swim, ski,
		build a retaining wall, landscape a garden. dad came with me to choose flowers for my florist business 
		every month when i was younger, he watched every one of my netball games, he helped me with my homework every time
		i got stuck, he taught me how to lay coblestones and how to camp outdoors and survive in the bush (jungle).
		how to cut wood and climb trees. He would go off and explore then come back to get us kids to show us 
		his discoveries of hidden cave pools, hidden beaches along the NZ coast line.
		i had so much fun doing all this with my dad.  The bits i didn't like about him are easy to change given time.
		The things i love about my dad will never change, they are the things he taught me that make me who i am
		today. 
		Mum said he was always proud of me, he just thought i already knew that and that he did not need to tell me.

		It's funny how in life we always focus on the bad, when the good far outway the bad, we seem to forget
		all the good times until it is too late.


		Parents do the best they know how with the resources they have. i always thought my brothers monopolised
		my fathers time, but remembering everything i have done with my father i realise, he spent just as much 
		time with me, only i never took notice when he did. instead i took him for granted.


		Books i read.

		

		












		And here is what we think of Telecom NZ [link]